Happy Saturday, have a nutter

So I was following up on an interesting thread B3ta passed out about some seriously abusive bloke over on the Thorn tree. Now, the Thorn tree is full of beardy traveler idiot types, but this guy's reaction was somewhat overt for a self described 55 year old teacher; "You C#$k sucking son of a w$%re" aimed at a criticizer and such. Have a look here and see for yourself. I couldn't resist looking on through the wonder of Google (good google ad song) and I found that this guy is actually a teacher called John Gobin Shaw who has made some interesting posts on a terrorist discussion thread in which he claims to have uncovered plans for the 9-11 attacks while working in Korea in 1997. Phew, that was unconnected yet somehow fitting thought I. Now armed with his full name I goggled it and found his CV. He states that he's been teaching for 10 years and has a BA and TEFL / ESL training. The TEFL / ESL stuff is generally a semi-professional qualification in english teaching to non anglophones. Without a teaching degree it wouldn't get you into a school class room, but would be enough to teach, say, a group of fundamentalists how to say "this plane is flying to Washington". Interestingly; he mentions the BA several times without clarifying which subject it's in; clearly not in teaching, then. Bizarrely he claims to have met Barbara bush (WOW), hypes his 9-11 theory and tops it off with the claim that he survived the worst railroad disaster in the history of Ireland. All three I am sure make him more qualified to teach our children. Oh, "In spare time I like to work out with weights in resistance training at a gym" which had a wonderful caveman ring to it, for an English teacher.
He's looking for a teaching job in Beijing so I passed this on to my mate Rich who's involved in starting a school up there at the moment. I suggested he get him in for an interview and see if he can make him pop. Rich (and his family) may have to leave town directly after, though.

Yay for investigative Googalism!

Morning all

Apparently this is news;

Wednesday June 15, 05:22 PM
Pope Benedict XVI (pictured) tried on a fireman's helmet at his weekly general audience and spoke briefly on a portable phone handed to him by a member of the public. AFP/Arturo Mari

Fantastic; and just when I thought religion was getting boring.

Oz was a fantastic weekend we managed to go whale watching, surfing (nearly killed me) mountain biking (very nearly killed me) as well as eating enough shrimps and meat to leave a small country wondering skeptically about the red meat in their bowels and got drunk several times. Very drunk twice. Human buckaroo pictures to follow once Dave emails them.

Back at work and you wouldn't believe how things could sour over 4 days, 2 of which were a weekend. The French have now decided to raise their game and take their complaint to our group chairman, the ever Italian Enzo P. Not a great way to end my tenure at Gartner but only 6 weeks to go I suppose. Next week will be all bus time tables and reports on food as I tour the factories with the angry French. Actually, I rather hope they're so pissed off with me that they insist on my boss going instead.

Nuff for now, Coffee needs to be made

Bomber out